:: Our first road trip to Melaka ::

Updated with images.

Back from a short getaway to Melaka. We decided to drive in on our own to this Heritage city of Malaysia. This is our first self-drive trip up north to Malaysia (well, we've heard enough stories but we managed to come back in one piece together with the car)

We were supposed to drive a Honda Stream, but somehow, we drove a Chrysler Grand Voyager in. Driving a Chrysler somehow add pressure to us cos this is too expensive a car and it just shout "Look at Me!!" and knowing the security in Malaysia isn't too fantastic we just have to be careful with where we park our car.

We set off at 4am on Saturday morning *yawnz* and cleared the custom slightly after 5and here we are hitting the north-south highway. It rained along the way and luckily I wasn't the driver thus I get to sleep at the back of the car. We arrived in Machap for a toilet break (Machap is 10 minutes before Yong Peng) nothing fantastic over there but it's just a short break for all of us. It rained along the way therefore we can't realli drive too fast (I think we hit 110-120km/hr). It was onli 9.30am when we arrive in Ayer Keroh (just outside Meleka City). We went for our breakfast, Chicken Rice Ball at Chung Hwa Coffee Shop. There are few others shops that sells chicken rice ball like Hoe Kee, A-One etc. Chung Hwa is a small and old coffee shop and it was pretty crowded when we reached there but we managed to find a seat pretty fast too. There are 5 rice balls, each the size of a golf ball. The chicken is succulent and I have to say it's one of the most delicious hainanese chicken I've had so far. (FYI, I'm not a lover of broiled chicken cos there's always a smell in it and I only like roasted chicken).

Being a fan of the Mediacorp drama series "The Little Nyonya", we decided to visit The Baba & Nyonya Heritage Museum. This is also the place where most of the scenes were shot. The tour took around half an hour with a tour guide walking you through the various rooms in the Peranakan house. Entrance fee is RM8. We have made reservation at Mahkota Hotel Melaka (one of the oldest hotel in Malacca. The hotel seriously need some overhaul as the interior is quite worn out. We initially made reservation for a 2 bedroom apartment but when we checked in, we were given a 1 bedroom apartment. The 1 bedroom apartment looks like our HDB flat and I don't think I would like to stay in it. We went to the frontdesk to request for an upgrade of room. So in the end, with a top up of RM50, we upgraded to their junior suite which is not that fantastic either but it definitely felt like we were upgraded from a HDB unit to a condo unit. After checking in and some rest, we played tourist for the rest of the day visiting A'Famosa, St Paul's Chapel, Christ Church, The Stadhuys and Menara Taming Sari.

When night falls, there was a slight drizzle and we hurried in to a restaurant that serves authentic Peranakan food - Nancy's Kitchen. We ordered Nanas Lemak Udang, Babi Ponteh, Nyonya Chap Chai, Chinchalok Omelette, Otah and Curry Chicken. I especially like the Babi Ponteh as it was abit sour due to the assam and the pork was just crispy on the outside and tender inside. It continues to rain even after our dinner so the guys decided to go for a drink at Geographer Pub just opposite Nancy's Kitchen while Pearl and I went to buy poncho and shop around Jonker Street. On a non rainy days, Jonker Street at night will be bustling with activities. There were stalls selling noodles, kueh kueh, handicraft etc etc. Becuase it was raining, the hawkers there have to wait for the rain to stop before they start business. Pearl and I went to hunt for the famous Chendol in Malacca. It has to be the most yummy chendol I've ever had. The gula melaka was so tasty and fragrant even the coconut cream was so fresh. Definitely not something you get in Singapore. And it cost us only RM1.70. There were other yummilicious food like Nyonya Assam Laksa, Baba Laksa, Goreng Goreng (like gado gado) but because we were too full from our dinner, we decided to come again for lunch the next day.

We checked out around noon and head sraight to Tan Kim Hock for some local products. Then it's lunch at the forever crowded shop that sells yummilicious chendol. This time round I managed to have their Nyonya Assam Laksa. TASTY! the thick beehoon tasted like udon and mee tai mak cos it was very Q, and again I had the chendol.

It won't be long before I hit another road trip. Tada!


Yummilicious Chicken Rice Ball


This is where they serves the yummilicious chicken rice ball


Waterwheel


San Shu Gong - Local products

:: On a Holiday Spree ::

Have been going on short trips recently.. Haha, I just went to Genting and KL end of February and oh my, that trip somehow make me aged faster.. All the late nights and drinking, gosh!

Nothing to blog about that trip since I just been there a month ago so that's it.

Look out for my next posting on my road trip to Malacca. Woohoo!!

:: All Good Things Come To An End ::

Weeks back, I posted a song lyrics "All Good Things Come To An End" by Nelly Furtado. At that point of time, the song is plainly just soothing to the ear though it has got sad lyrics.

I'm currently looking for a job due to the fact that my ex-company is undergoing some restructuring and sadly, they decided to close down my department. I am leaving my 2 pretty ladies and Mr Handsome therefore this song further deepen my feelings.

All I have to say is what goes around comes around. And all that I am going to do now is brace myself and brave through this tough period.

:: Get to/ Got to ::

Every morning for several years, promptly at 10am, a prominent businesswoman visited her mother in a nursing home. She was close to her mother and loved her very much. Often she had requests for appointments at the time of day. Her response was always the same: “No, I’ve got to visit with my mother.” Eventually, her mother passed away. Shortly thereafter someone asked the woman for an appointment at 10am. It suddenly hit her that she could no longer visit her mother. Her next thought was, ‘Oh, I wished I could visit my mother just one more time.’ From that moment on, she changed her “got to’s” to “get to’s.”

Her story makes us realize that pleasurable things are “get to’s.” I get to play pool today, or I get to go on vacation this week. Burdensome things are “got to’s.” I have got to go to work at 7am tomorrow, or I have got to clean the house. Since the perceptions influence thinking and performance, try this. Instead of saying, “I’ve got to go to work,” think about the people who have no job. Then you can enthusiastically change it to, “I get to go to work tomorrow.” If somebody invites you to go fishing, instead of saying, “No, I’ve got to go to my child’s game on Saturday,” think about the fact that someday your child will grow up and you won’t be able to go to his or her games. Then it’s easy to change it to “get to.”

It is amazing what that change in words will eventually do for your attitude. You will find yourself looking forward to doing those things instead of feeling as if you have to do them. With a difference in attitude, there will be a difference in performance. With a difference in performance, there will be a difference in rewards. So think about these things, and change your “got to’s” to “get to’s.”

~Credit to Junie~

:: Happy Valentine's Day ::

Happy Valentine's Day to all!!

I had a rather different V Day this year cos I celebrated with my in-laws this year!
On this special day where all couples exchange gifts of love, it is also the birthday of my mother-in-law. So this year, we celebrated with her with a dinner at Vienna (United Square).

Anyway, I received a very special V Day gift from Dar Dar! (Drum roll.....) Tada..... I've got 3 bottles of concentrated bird nest. Yipee yipee, Dar dar knows that I've been taking it for good complexion and good health, therefore he decided to be practical this year (Anyway, he's been a practical guy all along, engineers duh).

:: Anna Sui ::

I'm a sucker for all things beautiful. Especially Anna Sui stuffs. Love it's butterflies, roses, and everything about it. I'm like bees to honey when it comes to Anna Sui. Anyway, I just splurge almost $200 on Anna Sui stuff again but I do get some freebies in return. (hahaha) I've actually never taken any photos of them but today I happened to be in the mood to take some of my collection (I have not included the perfumes and body lotions that I have)

Clockwise from top: Eyelash curler, Loose Powder, Moisturizing Fluid Foundation, Nail Polish, Pressed Powder (refill pack)


The freebies that I've got


My collection (excluding my perfumes and body lotions)

PS: Their nail polish has got to be one of the best! Just one coat is all you need. The red is a real nice bright red and it's easy to apply.

:: Quote of the Day ::

:: Happy 牛 Year ::

Happy 牛 Year to all!!! (Though it seems to be abit late but anyway CNY are for 15 days...hahaha)

Was away for a short getaway during the Chinese New Year, nothing too fanciful, a Genting trip that is. Haha, nonetheless, I came back $50 richer from the gambling. I declare, Jackpots are boring games, I prefer Tai-Sai. Higher bets = More thrills...

Took some photos with Minimo, was a model for Jim Jim's D60 but he said my skills are better than his. (Of course man, I was a school photographer when I was in Secondary School).

I'll just post some photos from my Minimo, as for the D60, will have to wait till I get the copies from him.

:: Minimo ::

A new toy for me and that is..... *drum-roll* Tada!! A Mini Digital Lomo.
For those who do not know what is a Lomo, here's a brief write up:

Lomo is a type of casual, snapshot photography which emphasizes on Charmed by the unique, colorful, and sometimes blurry images. Characteristics such as over-saturated colors, Tunnel effect, Snap shot, off-kilter exposure, blurring, and happy accidents.

There are a few lomo-cameras around for awhile like Holga, LC-A etc... They uses the typical film and you've got to develop the pictures. And here you are, a Lomo Camera in digital format for the first time!

Digital Lomo: it is a lomo camera but in digital format. Meaning, you can do away with your over exposure films, scanner, and save lots of time. Just aim, snap and upload to your computer!

Measuring at 38mm X 60mm X 20mm and 15g in weight, this is definitely a keeper.

I've taken this mini baby out yesterday and here's some pictures.






P/S: None of the photos are edited.

:: Days with my Father ::

My mum died suddenly on September 4th, 2006

After she died, I realized how much she'd been shielding me from my father's mental state

He doesn't have Alzheimers, but he has no short-term memory, and is often lost.

I took him to my mother's funeral and to the burial, but when we got home, he'd asked me every 15-20 minutes where my mother was. I'd explain carefully that she had died, and we'd een to her funerals.

This was shocking news to him.

Why had no one told him?
Why hadn't I taken him to the funeral?
Why hadn't he visited her in the hospital?

He had no memory of these events.

After a while, I realized I couldn't keep telling him that his wife had died. He didn't remember, and it was killing both of us to re-live her death constantly.

I decided to tell him she'd gone to Paris, to take care of her brother, who was sick.

And that's where she is now.


I asked my father to look into the mirror, while I took his photograph.

Now, the thing you have to realize about my dad is that he was a very handsome man when he was young. When people talk about 'film star handsome', well, that was my dad. In fact, he WAS a film star (of sorts), in Hollywood, during the 1930s.

So when he looks in the mirror, he sees a man ravaged, a man no longer beautiful, and that upsets him deeply.

You see, he's still vain at 98. In fact, his vanity can be quite extraordinary.

I tried to take him to the doctor a few months ago, but on the way out, he caught a glimpse of himself in the hall mirror.

He was so horrified with his appearance, that he refused to leave the house until I found a 'black pencil' to dye his white hair with.


I find these scraps of writing all over the house... they are a glimpse into his mind, the disquiet he tries to hide from me

Where is everyone?
What's going on?

How lost he feels.


My dad spends an enormous amount of time in the toilet.

Because he has no short term memory, he can be in there for 2-3 hours at a time.

He'll do his business, then stand up, and as he's putting on his pants, say, "Wait a second - I have to go"

If you try and reason with him, and explain that he's just gone, he'll look at you as if you're an idiot...


Eating is often a miserable experience.

I realize now why my mother cooked the same meals over and over, towards the end of her life.

They were the only things my father would eat.

The ONLY thing he'll eat with any regularity is eggs.
Scrambled eggs, egg salad, egg-drop soup from the local chinese. He eats insane amount of eggs.

And yet, when I took him to the doctor recently, is cholesterol was down.

Maybe there are health benefits to an all-egg diet.


Because my parents had me so late, my dad was essentially retired when I was growing up.

But for my ambitious, driven father, he wasn't retired at all, just working on his next career.

Being an artist.

I have so many memories of him listening to opera, sketching, painting, sculpting.

Although he doesn't paint anymore, he still sees. He still has the artistic impulse.

He was admiring the sunset, saying that he could make a "whole series" of painting around those wonderful colors.

The urge is still there, even if the physical ability is not.



My dad is an amazing storyteller.

I've listening to him for as long as I can remember, and I've always taken pride in his oscar-winning performance.

If he is in a bad mood, I'll ask him to tell me one. He embraces the role with such gusto, that his gloom dissapates instantly.

Here, he's telling one of my favourites:

The italian Fishmonger (Judging from the crazy gesticulations and accent)

The man would tell my father, then a 10 or 12 year old kid:

'Donta squeeza the fish! It makes the eyes a-bulge'



My fater was 98 today.


I asked my father to take my photo today.

I wondered if it would show how much I love him.

I'm wearing the ring my mother was wearing, the day she died.


I found one of my dad's film.

It's a Charlie Chan's detective story, shot in the 30's.

We watched it together this afternoon. (That's him on the right).

I don't think he'd seen it since it was made.

He told me that he was too young to grow the required pencil mustache, so he had to have it 'glued on'.

It's amazing to see my dad, not as my father, but as a young man.

Vigorous, lucid, filled with life.

Me, my mother, our lives together, all shrouded in the vast unknown before him...


I'm always amazed at my father's love for my mum.

It's a constant force, like sunlight, or gravity.

He never stops talking about her. His gratitude for her love, for the relationship they had.

For the way in which she was the glue for our little family.

I loved her so much, but she drove me crazy.

My hair was too short. My shirt was too wrinkled. I wasn't standing straight.

She called me up once and told me not to go outside, because it was dangerously windy!

Now that she's gone, I realize that I spent a lifetime resisting her influence, and now, I miss it.

I think she was right about almost everything.

She would have been very happy to hear me say these words.


Sometimes when we're talking, my dad will stop, and sigh, and close his eyes.
It's then that I know, that he knows.

About my mum.

About everything.

~ By Phillip Toledano (www.dayswithmyfather.com)

Toledano's Days with My Father began as a web-based photo journal with the artist’s own text, cataloguing a poignant series of photographs of his father after his mother's death.

The resulting work is an intensely powerful, heartwrenching and yet hopeful glimpse into his personal journey with his father, as they struggle to make sense of the latter's gradual loss of memory as well as their remaining time together in the world.

:: Nikon D60 ::

Jim Jim got himself an expensive toy - Nikon D60

I would say this is a pretty good toy for entry level. He is so into photography lately. I'm going to be his model (even if he doesn't ask me to)... hahahaha

:: Inaugural Run ::

Inaugural Safari Zoo Run

Runners, joggers and walkers will be thrilled to know that there will be a unique and exciting run starting 2009. In memory of Singapore Zoo's icon, Ah Meng, Pink Apple Pte Ltd is organising the inaugural Safari Zoo Run on February 7, 2009 in commemoration of Ah Meng's passing.
Spanning a 6.2 km route that traverse the tram route across both parks, the run will begin at the coach bay area between Night Safari and Singapore Zoo covering the 3.2 km run at Night Safari before continuing with the Singapore Zoo route.
(Adapted from http://www.zoo.com.sg/whatsnew/safarizoorun.htm)

Yes, I'm going for this Safari Zoo Run with my Mr & Mrs Booz and my Jim Jim. And to get my butt of the couch, they made me run 6km on Saturday along East Coast beach. (In fact, I ran for the first 3km and ended up brisk walking for the next 3km). And now the result from the run, my legs ache like hell. But it definitely feels damn good to be sweating out. I'll try to do this at least once a week (esp with Mr boo being the Devil Trainer)

:: Happy 2009 ::

:: Doom? ::

I saw this on Nic's blog and thought this is intersting. (Sometimes it does feel sick to be doing the same thing as others)
Tue, Dec 09, 2008
The Sunday Times
It's all doom and groom by Teo Cheng Wee

That's it. I'm not going to get married. Not the way weddings are going today.

This being the year-end wedding season, I've gone to a couple of them and I'm constantly reminded that each one needs to be more special than the last.

I guess it's only natural for couples to want to outdo others at the altar. It's a big day and nobody wants to have 'just another wedding'.

So I've gone to gardens, beaches and bungalows for weddings. I've even boarded a cruise ship that sailed around Singapore's Southern Islands, which I thought was hard to top.

But that was challenged by a wedding I attended recently where the couple shot and edited their own video, and the bride surprised the groom by secretly learning to play the guitar - no easy thing to hide when they are planning a wedding together - and singing a song to him on stage. The groom then surprised her by playing the keyboard.

Phew.

By the time it's my turn, if I'm going to do something that no one else has done before, I would have to eat fire on stage - no, make that eat fire on stage while rollerblading - then throw knives blindfolded at my wife, who will catch them with her mouth.

Then - what the heck, since I have already put in so much effort - a trained polar bear can pass me my wedding rings.

Oh and of course, we'll quit our jobs two years before the big day to train for this.

It didn't seem that long ago that weddings were much simpler affairs. These days, everyone claims that their wedding is also 'a simple affair', but underneath that so-called simplicity is a whole lot of thought and attempt to stake a claim at uniqueness.

Think of the little creative activities I've been asked to do at different weddings: Use the marker pens we've provided and decorate the cards on your dinner table with your wishes. Sign our pop art canvas portrait. Take a polaroid picture with us and save it as a keepsake.

I haven't been around long enough to track the complete history of Singaporean weddings, but my take is that they evolve every decade or so.

There will be a period of stability, some kind of wedding norm that everyone sticks to for a period of time.

Then a group of smart alecks will decide that it's too stale and come up with a fancy new idea, triggering a quantum leap to another level. Everyone follows suit, another period of stability sets in, and so on.

Allow me to illustrate.

In the 1980s, as many of you will remember, weddings were straightforward affairs, held in some Chinese restaurant in Chinatown or Pasir Panjang.

Depending on your taste, you will enter the restaurant to the blaring sounds of Europe's Final Countdown or George Lam and Sally Yeh's Xuan Ze (Choice).

Fast forward a decade or so to the 1990s, and weddings were no longer deemed grand enough if you held them at Chinese restaurants, so everyone looked for their favourite five-star hotel ballroom in Orchard Road.

If you have taste, you will enter the ballroom to anything but Europe's Final Countdown or George Lam and Sally Yeh's Xuan Ze (Choice).

Another decade flies by and ballrooms have become passe. You should now hold your wedding on a beach in Bali.

Regardless of your taste, you will make your grand entrance to some song by a bossa nova singer no one has heard of.

Somewhere down the road, I can imagine this conversation taking place with my significant other.

Me: Why don't we fake a walk-in with music and smoke, but then burst out of the wedding cake?Fiancee: I heard a friend of Jane's has already done that.
Me: How about we step into a box and appear on stage the next second?
Fiancee: Oh, John and Michelle did that at their wedding. He sawed her in half and put her back also.
Me: Okay. Why don't we call off the wedding?
Fiancee: I don't mind, but Paul and Peggy have already cancelled theirs first.

There are two ways to go forward for me. Use this as a convenient excuse if I don't get hitched. Or if you know a smart, funny woman who doesn't mind having knives thrown at her on her big day, give me a call.

I will take her to the zoo to see the polar bears.

This article was first published in The Sunday Times on Dec 7, 2008.

:: Let it snow ::

I love snowflakes

:: G'Day Mate ::

Catch Australia last evening, complimentary from Tourism Australia. I lost myself in the movie. A great movie set against rugged, romantic and vast landscape of Outback no wonder it didn't feel like a bloody 165 mins show.

This show is simply worth your money and your time.

:: I'm obsessed with ..... ::

Gosh! I cannot believe that I am still here writing this entry. I'm totally hooked on TPF. I can scour through tens and hundreds of pages and not get sick of it. This is the reason why I am still here instead of sleeping!

This is becoming an addiction! *Freaking hell*

:: Not Obama, It's Nana::

:: Nostalgic ::

:: Sun, Sand, Beach - Bali ::

I'm just back from Paradise. Great holiday though it's only for a good 4 days. Let the pictures do it's talking...